


(in the midst of) how everybody lived

by constanted



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: (give lucretia a cool gf 2kforever), (the only tag i use anymore ig), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Julia Burnsides Lives, Road Trips, The Ambiguously Good Duo (Ambiguously Good!), The Bureau of Balance, The Raven Queen is Good To Her Patrons, The Seven Birds Are Aliens, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-09-16 05:26:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16947864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constanted/pseuds/constanted
Summary: Lucretia takes a detour on her journey to the Felicity Wilds and cannot help but intervene in a potential tragedy. This... changes things.(or: The Incredibly True Story Of The Friendship Of Madame Director Lucretia And Julia Waxmen)





	1. A WITNESS, WATCHING IT

**Author's Note:**

> oops all multichap fics. this has been on my mind for a WHILE, y'all. i'll be updating twice a week-ish, but, look, i'm not perfect.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am a forest fire  
> And I am the fire and I am the forest  
> And I am a witness watching it  
> I stand in a valley watching it  
> And you are not there at all
> 
> (a burning hill / mitski)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops all multichap fics. this has been on my mind for a WHILE, y'all. i'll be updating twice a week-ish, but, look, i'm not perfect.

Lucretia doesn’t save people anymore. Self-preservation is key at this point in her journey; her year alone plays on repeat in her mind, her younger self shouting her own weaknesses at her, now. If she dies, all is lost. She has no knowledge about the Raven Queen or Her servants on this plane, but public opinion regarding necromancy suggests that Lucretia is not in Her favor.

All of this to say: Lucretia doesn’t save people anymore. She’s already risking enough, walking into an obvious death trap tomorrow. But she hears shouts as she makes her way down a detour, syllables that ring all too familiar,  _ Kalen _ and  _ bombs _ and  _ the revolutionaries’ home _ .

Lucretia doesn’t save people anymore, but there is no point in not dying if she doesn’t have her family to live for. So she decides to break her own rules, and she takes a sharp left turn. She was never good with Phantom Steed, not like Taako, who  _ taught this spell to her, goddamnit _ , but this mount seems to get the point, and it breaks into a gallop as she steers straight toward a city she once thought idyllic.

Raven’s Roost is known for its beauty, for its rustic charms. Houses made of wood and stone, everything connected by bridges. The artists that live there are the finest at their crafts, and the people that live there are outstandingly kind. Lucretia had thought it something of a paradise, for all except its bitter cold. The sunsets here, whenever she visited, were more vivid than anything she’d seen since she left home. The smiles on her brother’s face were brighter than she’d ever seen.

But, see, that was the past. Now, it’s a hellscape. Dust and ash and bodies, bridges collapsed. She ties the horse to a small rock formation, and she begins teleporting. She’s always been good at teleporting, She manages to evacuate a few children, get them to somewhere safer and higher up. She sees a humanoid shape rushing in toward a house, though, and immediately abandons all pretenses of acting as a savior to all. She’s here to save him. She owes him a life, if nothing else.

It’s not him, though. It’s a half-elven woman, a metal leg composed of twisting polygons, and a panicked look on her face.

And Lucretia knows her. Knows who she is. Knows who she loves. She does not know Lucretia, but she really, really should. But--

“You have to--you have to let me go, my father is in there, and he’s--” She’s crying, and she’s panicking, and Lucretia does not know how to tell her that destruction like this almost always means loss.

A column collapses, and the house the woman was about to enter turns to rubble. Whoever said energy cannot be created or destroyed was clearly bullshitting, because Lucretia can see the light leave the woman’s eyes just as the crashing sounds reach the two of them.

Lucretia steels herself. “Your father is dead, you have to go. Come on. Come on--”

Lucretia drags her back to the horse, and mounts, putting the woman behind her. She secures her, and takes off, lets her adrenaline take over. Julia Waxmen is struggling behind her, and she is screaming, and she is trying to pull a knife. Lucretia puts a stop to that fairly quickly. She knows how to protect herself, now. She’s had to learn how. Julia is strong, sure, but she has not seen what Lucretia has seen. And thank the gods for that.

When they get to a point far enough from Raven’s Roost, Lucretia dispels the steed, and she assists Julia in her descent, throws in a Calm Emotions for change. And she says, “I can’t take you home. He’ll come after you if you stay there. Give me a city.”   


Weary, “Who are you?”

“Give me a city, Julia.”

“How do you know my name?”

There’s an easy enough lie, there, “I follow political news. Where can I take you?”

Julia stares at her, bright hazel eyes wide and curious in a way that Lucretia could fall in love with. Deep olive skin with too many freckles to count, dark hair kept a little bit shaggy, with a failed attempt at being held back by a black band. She’s a tough-looking woman, scars and tattoos covering her body, one of her ears with a few unintentional notches in it. She looks, for lack of a better term, pretty hardcore. Lucretia had seen her before, when she crashed Magnus’ wedding, and when she had spied a little bit, but seeing her up close is different, is grounding.

“My husband is in Neverwinter,” Julia offers, still staring. Lucretia holds in her sigh of relief, but her heart rings at the knowledge that he’s still alive. Julia continues, “Do you--d’you have a stone? Of Far Speech. I--I left mine in the house, and-- _ shit _ .”

Her voice is soft and melodic, a contrast to the sharp edges of her appearance. Lucretia nods, pulls it out of her pocket. Julia adjusts the frequency, and Lucretia doesn’t look, to avoid temptation. 

“Mags,” Julia whispers, “Mags, I--I’m heading to Neverwinter.”

_ “Jules? Are you--are you okay? You sound like you’re hurt _ ,  _ should I head-- _ ”

“Kalen came back. He--he bombed the corridor. Almost everyone’s dead. A woman, uh--a woman helped me escape. A stranger. I’m on her stone, right now. Babe, I’m--I’m okay, I promise, but--”

_ “I’m in the central tavern. Can you tell me what the stranger looks like _ ?  _ If I see her and not you, I can still find you-- _ ”

“Tall and dark-skinned human woman. White hair. Looks like some kinda ranger or rogue or somethin’?”

“Bard,” Lucretia mutters. Her clothes aren’t  _ that  _ battered.

“She’s a bard. Trying to teleport us, I think.”

_ “Okay, Julia, I’ll be on the lookout, uh--are you--Jules, I’m so--are you _ \--”

“I don’t think I’m gonna be able to say much, baby, I--I’ll see you soon, okay? I promise.”

_ “I love you _ .”

“Yeah. You, too.”

And she hands the stone back, and she sighs, collapses into Lucretia’s arms. She’s not crying, but there’s an implication of it; an implosion, rather than an ex. Lucretia pats her shoulders, and, gently, she says, “I lost my home, too.”   


“What was your home?”   


“it was… smaller, than this. Not in Faerûn.”

“You sound like you’re from Faerûn.”

“I was very young. So are you, though.”

“You look my age.”

“I do.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Lucretia, but it’s not important, right now.”

“You saved my life. My husband’ll insist on writing you a thank you note. He’s  _ also  _ not from Faerûn, we don’t think, but, hey, anyone’s from Raven’s Roost if they--they-- _ shit _ , that was a weak-ass Calm Emotions, but. Anyway, I want to thank you  _ fucking  _ properly, except--bad casting, ma’am. No offense.”

Lucretia is taken aback at the sheer concept of Magnus Burnsides writing a thank you note, and of him marrying a  _ mage _ , but instead of commenting, she shakes her head, “Saving you was a moral duty, not an impressive feat, Miss Waxmen.” Which is a lie. Lucretia  _ doesn’t  _ save people anymore. It might be a moral duty, but it’s certainly not one she usually follows.

“I think it’s admirable. Saving people’s about the coolest thing you can do.”

“I suppose.”

Lucretia levitates some chalk, starts tracing  out a Teleportation Circle. She knows the Neverwinter circles like the back of her hand, by now, and she knows one right by Magnus’ tavern. She can push Julia through, and she won’t have to see him, but she’ll know he’s safe, know he has someone with him. But--it can’t do  _ that  _ much harm, can it? She pushes the debate out of her mind for later, starts writing the Old Language for  _ let us travel for our safety/let us be safe/let us not yet be dust. _

“I’ve never seen those runes before.”

“I’m not from Faerûn, like I said. This was my mother’s native language.”

“Oh.”

And Lucretia comes to a terrible realization.

“I’m out of spells.”

“ _ Fuck _ .”

“I can--look, we can just camp out tonight, I have a tent in my bag, and--and as soon as I’m rested up, I can get the circle working.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course. And I’m--I kinda fucked up my shoulder, probably should ret on that before teleporting, anyway.”

“I also have healing, in the morning.”

Jullia hums. It’s getting dark. Lucretia likes the silence, likes not having to think about the fact that everyone she knows has a life now, without her. And she’s the one who gave them those lives, sure, but--it’s difficult. She doesn’t have to think about it. Julia Waxmen is just a companion on a sidequest. She’s soft-singing old-timey--contemporary, here, Lucretia supposes--folk music, now, some ode to the Raven Queen.  _ in the dark of the night/she took me dancing on the sea/and i put up no fight/all bells have chimed for me _ . Lucretia hums along, pretends to know the song as well as anyone from this plane would.  _ she and fate/lovers sweet/took me in/to have, to keep.  _ Lucretia is familiar with worshippers of the Raven Queen, and they are  _ all  _ extraordinarily romantic about dying. Lucretia only understands it a little bit.

After a too-long silence: “You look cold.”

“I am.”

“Jacket?”

“I have one in my pack, but. Thank you, Julia. I appreciate it.”

“It’s not cold outside. Here. I need the weight off my shoulder.”   


And Lucretia finds a heavy, faded leather jacket on her shoulders, warm and smelling of smoke, lavender, and chamomile. She nods, and Julia offers a smile, the first Lucretia has seen from the woman, save in the distance at the wedding. Julia picks up her singing again, this time, a love song.  _ the sun shines just for us/our hearts beat in three-quarter time/and we are fair and just/we waltz, stare at it til’ we’re blind _ .

“Cam, mission’s off,” Lucretia says, into her stone. Leaving a message. “I’ll mail you the payment regardless. Take care of yourself.”

“Cam?”   


“Merc. He was supposed to assist me in retrieving an artifact of interest, but--this takes priority. The mission was into what was almost certainly a death-trap, anyway.”

“Oh, so you’re an adventurer proper, then, not just some good samaritan with fifth level spells.”

“Oh, Miss Waxmen, I have level  _ nine  _ spells.”

“Goddamn.”

Lucretia preens, a bit--she’s come to like intimidating people, of late; it makes her more respectable in their eyes if they know that she is powerful. She needs respect, and she needs people. She is no longer trying just to survive, but to succeed as well. Pursuing the latter requires abandoning some of the mechanisms of the former.

“Fuck,” says Julia, after a little while. Lucretia is setting up a fire.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Understandable. Do you have kindling?”

Julia looks at her oddly, but hands her some papers. Orders from the Hammer & Tongs. Lucretia doesn’t take the care to read them. “Do you have anybody?” she hears, and she shakes her head, no.

“My family is gone, and while I’ve courted my share of women, I’m not really the type that people can safely stay in a relationship with.” All of which is true. She adds, “My father suffered an injury, and ended up unable to take care of himself. When I’m not out and about, I tend to him, he’s my ward.”

“Oh,” and she shakes her head. Starts another song. Lucretia doesn’t listen to the lyrics, can’t bring herself to it, but the song itself is melancholy, a-flat-minor key, slow-moving melody.

“We should rest. I have bedrolls.”

“Onwards at dawn.”

“Onwards whenever we wake up, yes.”

Lucretia lays out her camping supplies, uses a cantrip to control the fire, and lays down, not quite planning to sleep. Nor is Julia, apparently, because in either the depths of night or the earliest peaks of morning, Lucretia hears a, “Thank you, you know. For, uh. Saving me.”

She does not accept the gratitude, and she does not dream.


	2. LEFT MY SPACE FOR A DARK CLOUD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was sitting in the county jail 'til they dragged me out  
> You could see them when they left my space for a dark cloud  
> Things get hairy in the cemetery in the fall, my fault  
> Dance around ‘em like the ghosts in the ground ’til I’m one of them
> 
> (if u c my enemies / rubblebucket)
> 
> Teleportation magic is fucked up. Chivalry isn't dead, she's a butch. Julia has trust issues. Lucretia wishes she didn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hah

Lucretia wakes up before Julia, but Lucretia’s always been an early riser. Julia’s clearly in need of rest, so Lucretia takes care not to wake her, places the borrowed jacket back over her chest like a blanket. She’s got a pouch of pgorp to eat and a Sci-Fi/Fantasy Carly Rae Jepsen album she found buried under Magnus’ old bed to listen to while she figures all of this out. Most teleportation circles are closed for maintenance because of some continental vandalism movement, so that’s a bust. There are a couple of routes through Rockport, but she would have to putting Julia on a train, and Lucretia knows from too much experience that putting someone with a high strength modifier and extraordinarily fresh trauma in an enclosed space with a bunch of strangers is not safe. (See cycle one, day three, wherein Magnus and Lup destroyed more of Merle’s garden of native-to-home flora than would be expected of two of the seven remainders of their society.)

Phandalin runs the risk of a Barry encounter, and she dreads his reaction to seeing her. Sloane, the rogue from Goldcliff who helped Lucretia acquire a small sum of money, is working temporarily as a driver in Wrenover, which might be a help, but Sloane and Lucretia did not part on the best of terms, so that would be complicated.

She could always reach out to Maureen, but reaching out to Maureen means reaching out to Lucas, and, Gods, how the _fuck_ were she and Magnus selected for a groundbreaking scientific mission at his age? She could not have been at Lucas’ level of awful at eighteen. _Magnus_ couldn’t have been at Lucas’ level of awful at eighteen.

Julia groans at the sun hits the corner the two of them are perched in _hard_ , stretches—she sleeps holding two knives, a habit Lucretia has only recently abandoned, but which she can’t help but judge in others. Lucretia pops another unshelled pistachio into her mouth, signs a “good morning.” At Julia’s head-tilt, she swallows the pistachio whole and says, “Good morning.”

“Music. How is that—“ a yawn, “Uh—it sounds—“

“Little piece of magitek,” she says, a half-truth, holding up the player, “Just, uh, some playback spells plus some sustainers—arcane core.”

“That’s, uh. That’s pretty cool. I’d love to take it apart, sorta—I’m kinda a magitek _engineer_ , you know,” and she laughs, stilted. Points at her prosthesis. “Built this as an experiment _years_ ago. And I ended up needing it, so it’s worth it, but, uh. It simulates nerves, so phantom pain is less disconcerting, kinda? And it stays on really securely.”

“Impressive.”

“So, can I look at your thing?”

Lucretia stops the music, tosses it over. “I thought you were a smith?”

“I have hobbies, too.”

“Like overthrowing governments.”

“More of a calling, that--shit, how did you get the core so small?”

“Fuck if I remember. We should, uh. Get going. Can’t go direct to Neverwinter, non-circle teleportation wards were put up last year, and circles are down pretty much _everywhere,_ so we have a few options, uh--if you know any shortcuts--”

“Never fucking _walked_ from Raven’s Roost to Neverwinter.”

“Fair. I mean--fair. But, uh--” a buzzing in Lucretia’s pocket interrupts her, and she tosses her stone to Julia at the first syllable Magnus’ voice gets out. She takes back her player, shoves it in her bag, focuses on the meditation of packing instead of their conversation. She can hear crying.

She bites down on a pistachio shell to stop herself from speaking.

Some _I love yous_ . Some _I don’t know how to do this without yous_ . Some _we can destroy hims. nu-lye teaque’nos_ , the Faerûn wood-elven for the Home suns-elven _nọs mag’naque,_ which means, literally, “mutual guard,” and colloquially, “I am your shield and you are mine.” She does not know the Faerûn wood-elven phrases, but she can assume similarity from context clues, from the clear stumble from Magnus over not-quite perfect syllables for a shared intention.

She should learn the local dialects. It’s been six years.

She doesn’t have the time. It’s been six years.

“It’s a three day trek to Goldcliff,” Julia says, eyes red but voice steady, after ten minutes, “If we move fast. Mags is hitchin’ a cart over that way, so we can, uh. Meet up with him, there. It’ll take him six days.”

“Goldcliff’s wards are a bit less tight, I can Teleport--by which I mean, the spell Teleport--us about ten miles out.”

“That would work, yeah. Uh--tattoo.”

Pointing to the seven tiny birds on her left forearm. “Family crest.”

“Oh. Uh--it just--and, you too, actually, looks familiar. You look familiar. Do I know you?”

“I was a journalist?” And Julia shakes her head in the way uninoculated people always do, says, rushed, “I guess, sure, yeah.” Lucretia nods, offers an additional, “I spent some time in Raven’s Roost about four-and-a-half years back, when my brother fell sick. You might have seen me then?”

“That’s probably it. And--did you lose him?”

“He forgot me.” Julia looks like she’s putting things together, so Lucretia changes the subject to something that will give her less of a headache, “Miss Waxmen, if you’ll, uh, grab my shoulder--”

“Julia. Don’t be chivalrous, it’s not polite.”

“Chivalry’s not my intent. And isn’t chivalry synonymous with politeness? Not to be pedantic, but--”

“The ‘Miss Waxmen,’ thing, it feels like a power thing? In my favor. And--”

“In trauma therapy, they tell you to find people who respect you.”

“Trauma?”

“You saw your home burn. And I know that you’re repressing it, and I’ve been there, and--”

Julia rolls her eyes. “You are _super_ condescending, has anyone ever told you?”

“About ninety percent of people I’ve met. Grab my shoulder, Julia. Do you want me to call you _Jules_?”

“No, Julia’s fine.” And Julia’s grip on her shoulder is too tight, a bit aggressive. She ignores it, teleports the two of them to the spot she knows won’t get her hit right back.

Twelve miles outside of Goldcliff. A militia-member approaches them as the thick blue smoke of the spell dissipates--a halfling, in monk’s garb. Stares at the two of them.

“Corporal Lieutenant Hurley,” she offers a hand. Julia, being a bit shorter than Lucretia, offers her hand, sensing the inevitability of awkwardness.

“I don’t like cops,” says Julia. Lucretia elbows her.

“That’s fair, I’m just curious about--well, who the two of you are?”

“Magarria Starblaster, this is my sister-in-law, Raven Roost.”

“Saying this as somebody with the first name Lieutenant, those are the fuckin’ _worst_ fake names I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“Jules Burnsides and Luka Chival,” Julia says, a bit sternly, “My _sister-in-law_ is just paranoid. Again, I don’t like cops.”

Somehow, Julia’s deception works better than Lucretia’s. Maybe the honest aspects help? Lucretia’s never been good at that. She’s a storyteller by nature, she’ll stretch truths and make stories for the sake of her own livelihood. The Corporal laughs, a little bit, walks back off, says, “Don’t make too much trouble. If you do, you won’t be dealing with, well. Me.”

“Do you need papers,” Lucretia says-not-asks, expectantly, fully ready to pull out an illusory script.

“No, no, I’m good. It’s tourist season. Except for the--armaments, and the level seven spell, you two seem pretty nonthreatening, so--”

“Wanna bet?”

“ _Julia_.”

The Corporal walks off, disappears into the trees. Julia’s already drawn her knives by the time she notices. Lucretia stares at her, says, “You don’t just _tell_ cops that you distrust them. Remain subtle. Not all police forces are so blatant in their dislike of the people as Kalen’s forces.”

“How much politics do you follow?”

“Quite a bit.”

“Fuck Kalen.”

“In-fucking-deed, Miss Waxmen.”

“Do you have a surname? Is that worth anything? So I can show you how grating that is?”

“My biological family didn’t care for me, and my adoptive family doesn’t remember me. Probably for the better, frankly. I would… I think that they would prefer to be unassociated with me. I’ve removed myself from surnames.”

“So I _can’t_ condescend you, Miss Lucretia?”

“Funny.”

Julia’s started walking north--the right way, which Lucretia has to commend. It’s a warm grassland, with a winding road going down it. Lucretia hasn’t _hitched_ in awhile, but given Goldcliff’s vehicular strengths, it might be for the best. But also... she doesn't think that Goldcliff's outskirts are usually like this. But she's not from here. She doesn't know the seasons, the fauna. And she's been rather distracted for the last couple of years.

Just as Lucretia’s about to catch up with Julia, who is _absurdly_ fast, the woman in question turns around with her daggers in her hands.

“You worked for Kalen.” Her voice is sharp--not the voice Lucretia has come to know this last day, not a voice that is kind or sweet or any of the things Julia is. The daggers glow a light violet, disconcertingly familiar, “That’s why I know your face, right?”

Lucretia starts to back up, and she laughs, “Julia, I--”

“No, no, I don’t need an explanation. I’ve been thinking, right, and, like… you’re an absurdly powerful mage with a _generic-ass_ backstory who ran after _me_ , you know about me, you knew I’d be interested in magitek, and now, you have me here alone. You told me a story that matches my husband’s, puts his amnesia into context--that was a nice touch, by the way. Also, you’re a bard, but I haven’t heard _you_ play music at all--

“Hold on. I sign and I write and I speak aloud my spells. Bardic magic really just requires the capacity to inspire.”

“ _That’s_ your defense?”

“I can defend more of myself, but, Julia, I think you’re jumping to conclusions--”

Julia throws one of the daggers, and it halts in midair, releases a ring of violet flame. Lucretia manages to avoid it, and tries to jump for the dagger, but it returns to its owner in a snap.

“I only got one spell slot left, otherwise, I’d--”

“Fair’s fair. Julia. Can I explain myself to you before you accuse me of supporting the man who set your city ablaze? I’m not a fucking monster.”

“Have trouble doubtin’ that, Lucretia. Is that your real name, or--?”

“ _Yes_. Lucretia. Olatunji is my biological family’s surname. They were nobles, not in Faerûn, but… somewhere else.”

“Where?”

She speaks, knowing that Julia will hear static. And she smirks.

“What the _fuck_?”

“It’s information hidden from the public. For its greater good. See, Julia, I represent a secret organization called the Seven Birds, we… prevent the apocalypse, for lack of a better term.” And that’s almost _all_ truth. Lucretia is proud of herself. “And, Miss Fucking Waxmen, I saved your life because it was worth saving, not to lure you into a trap. I’m not a _monster_ , if that bears repeating to you.”

Julia falters, steps back. “Why were you passing through Raven’s Roost?”

“Like I said. I was looking for an item. I heard screams, I heard Kalen’s name. I have twenty Intelligence. I can intuit. I thought, might as well. And then, I saw you, and, Julia, you might be just what my group needs.” All truths. Fucking _Merle_ would be proud of her.

“I… look, I still don’t trust you. I don’t _trust_. Period.”

“You seemed to trust me yesterday.”

“I was having a pretty fucking bad day, if you can recall.”

“I understand. I _also_ have trust issues, but--Julia, if it means anything, I trust you. I do.”

Julia sheaths the knives. Lucretia tears through her mind for what kind of mage can do that--maybe one of those eldritch knights? Arcane tricksters? Or a warlock? She never learned too much about them. No plane that had warlocks ever lasted long enough for patrons to transfer over, Barry had found, so, while she’d documented, she didn’t commit it to memory. It wasn’t useful. She’ll put it together. She’s certain Julia won’t tell her, at least not now.

Julia keeps walking ahead. Lucretia has done everything in a given person’s ability to lose trust from her family. But nevertheless, she didn’t expect it to carry over through marriage.

A forest looms ahead. Julia has disappeared into it.

And Lucretia rushes in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAH
> 
> comment! kudo! etc!
> 
> <3


	3. SO SICK AND SAD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, and tell me, what's a man with a rifle in his hand  
> Gonna do for a world that's so sick and sad?  
> Tell me, what's a man with a rifle in his hand  
> Gonna do for a world that's so gone mad?
> 
> (the body electric / hurray for the riff raff)
> 
> After some violence, the girls arrive in Goldcliff. Lucretia hooks up with a rustically hospitable drow. Julia complicates things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :P  
> warning for violence, mentions of sex, and general dumbassery.

The forest outside of Goldcliff is not a natural phenomenon, though Lucretia is the only living soul who knows as much. Merle’s belt had led to some oddities around Goldcliff during the wars, and while Lucretia hasn’t been able to locate it, it should probably still be around the city. 

Julia doesn’t speak for a good amount of time. Her stride is confident, with anger and fire dripping out of it-- _ like Lup _ , Lucretia hinks, despite herself, even though Julia is nothing like Lup. Julia doesn’t even  _ look  _ like Lup; she’s short and muscular and rough around the edges.

She wonders if Barry has seen Julia, in his lich form. She wonders if he can even comprehend the relationship implied, or if he’s lost himself completely. She wonders if, in the latter hypothetical, that’s her own fault. Not just for having erased. She and Magnus had given him a Best Day Ever, and, four-and-a-half years ago, she gave him a Worst Day Ever. Does that take away the balance? Does that--

“You’re looking at me funny.”

“I’m thinking, Julia. It’s not about you.”

Julia shuts up again, makes a grab for Lucretia’s stone, but Lucretia jumps away--not in resistance, but rather, because she saw a movement in one of the trees.

“Mercs,” she whispers, draws her staff. 

“What?”

And Lucretia points upwards. She whispers some nonsense, distorts her voice with magic, and there is rustling, and then, a man, holding a knife, on the ground. He writhes with pain--Lucretia’s always been good at with psychic damage. Julia draws her daggers, rips a patch off of his sleeve as he struggles to gets up, and, as he tries to hit her, she stabs him in the shoulder.

“He works for Kalen,” she says, showing off an ornate embroidered “K” on the patch, “How much is he paying you to get me?”

The man gasps for breath, tries to hold his arm. Lucretia puts her staff on his chest.

“I’ll heal you if you talk,” bluntly.

“--After  _ Mr.  _ Burnsides.”

Lucretia digs the staff deeper. His breaths become strained.

“--Twenty-thousand gold pieces--”

Human man. Looks like he’s from money. Blond and maybe twenty-five.

“--Help--”

She casts Chain Lightning, and sends the extra bolts up the trees in case he has any peers. And he lays there. Dead.

“You said you’d heal him.”

“I lied.”

“Props. Just gonna take  _ this _ \--” she takes a vial of blood, places it in her bag. “Who  _ knows  _ why he had this on him, but--”

Julia is not a good liar. She  _ definitely  _ stole this man’s blood. Lucretia knows too many necromancers to criticize this. And before she can even make a joke about that to resolve even the tiniest fraction of tension, another merc drops toward them. He’s hurt, but not too badly--he must have jumped out from the bolt that hit him. Lucretia draws her staff, knows that this’ll be forced melee by the look on that man’s face, but Julia jumps in front of her, and-- _ oh _ .

Lucretia’s never done this part of this combat maneuver before, but she knows it well from sketching, from writing. 

Lucretia, staff braced in both of her hands like a shield, rushes forward, jumps over Julia, tucked into a ball--Lucretia adds a flip for flair--and just as the staff hits the man’s neck, two knives are lodged in his shoulders. As the man collapses, Julia smiles at her wildly, says, “How’d you know how to do that?”   


“Intuition.”

“Old strategy of me and my husband--distract’n’roll, you know?”

“Yes, uh--it’s a good strategy.”

“Where’d you learn to fight?”

She pauses, and thinks of the most convenient lie, “The Legato Conservatory?”

Julia  _ gasps _ , says, “Oh my God, it’s  _ real,  _ then, not just some bullshit he made up to impress me.”

“...Yes. It’s very real. Really great place. Pity it got blown up.”

And they trudge on, Julia a bit friendlier again. Thankfully. She sings songs Lucretia’s never heard, more about the Raven Queen and about love and about the hard work of smithing and the hard work of revolution. She wants to ask questions, wants to know everything there is to know about this strange world that she only had the tiniest influence upon. They clear the forest rather quickly, exiting into stark desert--

“I never understood the climate around here.”

“Gaia never did explain Her plots.”

“I guess not. Are you a… do you worship Gaia?”

“My father was a devotee of Pan, actually. I’m more unaligned than anything else. Faith in anyone but me’s a bit hard.”

“Ah. Y’know, the Raven Queen’s always lookin’ for new patrons.”

“Patrons?”

“Er. Worshippers. But, uh--yeah, she’s pretty cool. Unless you’re, like, a zombie, or something, in which case, I  _ do  _ have to murder you. Re-murder you, I suppose. But you’re a bit too… y’know, not-undead to be a zombie. So. You a necromancer?”

“I don’t have faith in Death, Julia, thank you, though.”

“You a necromancer, though?”

“No.”

Julia laughs, hearty, says, “I like you, kid, you’re fun. Sorry I tried to kill you.”

“Sorry I wasn’t helpful.”

“What’s your group called again?”

“The Seven Birds. Uh. Right now, it’s kind of just the One Bird--the rest lost their memory in a terrible battle, but, uh.” Lucretia pauses, looks off. She might have given herself away, there, if Julia can connect the pieces through the static. She’s said too much. She’s said  _ way _ too much. Julia touches her shoulder, stops. Looks at her. Lucretia looks back. Scars and freckles and eyes that seem too bright to be on a half-elf. Lucretia has not yet gotten used to the tiny differences between the people she knew and the people she’s come to know. Julia has knives tattooed on her shoulder blades. Julia has a scar that cuts through her bottom lip. Julia is saying something and Lucretia doesn’t hear it. It is maybe profound. It is maybe cursing her. It is maybe telling her some awful truth.

She wonders, has she ruined this woman? She picks her stone out of her pocket absentmindedly, fumbles around with it.

“--Do you want to--look, Luke--can I call you Luke?”

“I’d prefer you didn’t.”

“There y’are. Do you speak Elvish?”

“My--only sun elf dialects, but I can understand most everything else just fine.”

“Same with my Maggie. But there’s this phrase that my dad taught me, right,  _ elochi-yan zukot ā’tahi ús le’dere, le’dala _ .”

“Gods will sun-moon us with love and with time?”

“Goddess will reunite us with the ones we love because we are strong; built of love; built of time,” Julia smiles--chipped tooth, split lip, ring in her nose--”It means that you’ll find your other bird-people, I’ll get back to my Maggie. And maybe I’ll find you a lady to get you un-scared of commitment,” and she  _ winks _ , “Wink. I actually have, like, two ex-girlfriends that moved to Goldcliff. Also an ex-boyfriend, but you don't give off those vibes.”

“You’re terrible,” Lucretia says.

“And you’re built of time. I’m’a get you acting like a normal member of functioning society. Because you seem like you’re fucked up.”

“You’re also fucked up.”

“Unfucking people up is how I cope with  _ being  _ fucked up, darlin’, keep up. Can you get us to Goldcliff any faster?”

“Teleportation wards are rough, but, uh--I bribed the Captain of the militia, one time? Or. Rather. My ex did. And I can cash in on that.”

“Call him, then, but I’m not interacting with him.”

“Oh, of course. He’s a rather difficult man.”

And Captain Captain Bane is… himself, more than anything else. He’s gruff, and he takes well to hearing that Maureen is doing well, and he asks how the mission is going. Julia makes jerking-off motions as he speaks, rolling her eyes and groaning with annoyance. Lucretia ignores it. She’s used to this from Magnus, and wonders how the two of them manage to stay in a room together without it blowing up from unadulterated rebellion and laughter. Lucretia envies that, wishes she could love like that; a romantic love that could set the evil in the world ablaze. She never quite got to the  _ love _ phase with Lup. And she won’t; she sacrificed her ability to have that four-and-a-half years ago. She doesn’t deserve it.

Captain Captain Bane lets Lucretia open a portal into the city as soon as she invokes the  _ great PR of letting a heroic refugee into the city _ , and Lucretia thanks him profusely and hideously-cheerily. And she checks her and Julia into the fanciest hotel this side of Neverwinter, gets them a fancy-ass suite, all on Bane’s dime.

Julia calls Magnus, talks to him for an hour. This leaves Lucretia time to think.

She’s got Wonderland waiting for her. She can go, and she can find the Bell. She can leave Julia here, and Julia’ll be safe, and Magnus’ll be safe, and it’ll be  _ fine _ .

But Wonderland is a death trap. And she can’t stand the idea of leaving Julia, and--and there’s no  _ harm  _ in Magnus seeing her. He’d be the first-or-second to forgive her, of everybody, if he remembers--he was almost on board with her plan! He’d be willing to  _ help _ , frankly, and--and, look, there’s no way in hell Julia hasn’t started connecting the dots between Lucretia and Magnus, and--

And she has six days to figure this out. Right now, she needs to think logistically. She and Julia will both need baths, both need new clothes. She needs to check in with Killian, Carey, Avi, and Boyland out in Neverwinter to make sure that everything’s good with Davenport and Fisher. She can have Avi sacrifice a technical design, or something equivalent. She constructs a shopping list, leaves a note--

__ Julia  
_ Out to buy shit, be back w/in 4 hrs. If not back in 5 hrs, call KILLIAN -- Freq. 2431927.A, tell her am in trouble.  
_ __ L

And she heads out.

It’s nice to be alone. Nice to remember that she  _ is  _ alone, she’d gotten too used to companionship these last twenty-four hours. She is undeserving thereof, undeserving of the friendship of a woman whose life she could tear apart with a drop of ichor. A woman who has already lost so much.

But Lucretia would prefer not to think of that. She buys a new stone, buys clothes that should fit Julia, and clothes that should fit her. Neither are exactly their style, but they’re clothes, and they’re comfortable, and they don’t smell like dirt and blood. This is usually a pro, Lucretia thinks. She buys soaps and foods and a new dagger for herself, gets some clasps for her hair, gets a tiny little harp so she can pass as a bard from here rather than a bard from home. She flirts with vendors, the drow selling food, saying that she’s headed to the Woven Gulch to start a life there. She buys her food, and it’s delicious, almost tastes like home.

(And she gets her frequency. And she promises coffee in the morning. And she says, well, if you’re closing shop for the day, I’m sure my roommate wouldn’t mind, and--no, I’d prefer we keep this anonymous, no, it’s not you, it’s my intimacy issues, okay, sure,  _ Ren _ , I’m Luke, it’s a pleasure to meet you--)

Julia mocks her later on.

“You like her?”

“She was sweet. Had a bit of a rustic charm to her.  _ But  _ she’s moving to the Woven Gulch, and this was just a stop for travel funds, so--it was simply a rustic charm-based hookup.”

“Ah, to be weak for a rustic charm,” she says, wistfully, “Me, too.”

“ _ You  _ have rustic charm.”

“So Maggie and I complement each other. I like people I can relate to. What the  _ fuck  _ is this?” She holds up a curtain-like chunk of orange fabric that Lucretia had really only bought out of anxiety.

“A skirt.”

“An ugly skirt.”

“Fair. But it doesn’t smell like bomb-residue and dirt, so, hey, I’d say it’s an improvement. We need to blend in, Julia, or people will ask questions, and--”

Julia sighs, picks up some of the more practical clothes Lucretia had purchased, and changes. Julia is covered in ink--there is no non-magical way she could have done all of this, frankly, thick-lined and colorful drawings of birds and hammers and bears and eyes. Some old political symbols. Twelve circles in a circle--too similar to the IPRE logo to  _ not  _ catch Lucretia’s eye, and when she asks--

“Oh, my husband has it on his hip, and, uh. He was kinda confused by it. And I got one so he’d have a meaning to give it? He’s a fuckin-- _ wait _ , holy shit, didn’t you say that your bro--”

“Julia, I’d prefer not to have this--”

“Oh my  _ God _ .”

“Julia, it’s very complicated.”

“You do  _ kinda  _ look similar--”

“It’s not biological, Julia, it’s--”

Julia is laughing, cackling, “That’s why you’re so weird around me! Holy  _ shit _ , you’re just--holy  _ shit--”  _ and she pauses, suddenly looks a little darker, “Is that why you saved me?”

She waits, thinks for a moment. “I wanted to save whoever I could. I was happy that I could save you, Julia. I just--I’d prefer Magnus  _ not  _ find out, but--it would… hurt him. Do you understand?"

“I  _ understand,  _ I’m just super into this. Can you tell me about what he was like as a kid? Was he, like--was he--”

“He was a jock,” Lucretia says, rushedly, “His parents were--do you  _ understand what I’m saying?” _

“Uh, yeah, should I  _ not _ ?”

“You were confused when I told you where I was from yesterday.”

“Yeah, because you said you were from an alien planet? Like, I’m not gonna-- _ not  _ be confused by that.”

Julia has either accidentally been inoculated  _ or  _ is undead, both of which are near-impossible-- _ unless _ the Raven Queen is actually her patron, in which case, anything goes re: status re: living/dead, and then--but she would  _ know  _ that Magnus and Lucretia both have committed death crimes,  _ unless  _ that’s--

“Are you a patron of the Raven Queen? Like, a warlock?”

“Close enough. It’s a pretty new specialization of melee fighters, I just--blood magic, and shit. Y’know? And she lets me use her to take down the undead?”

“ _ Cool _ , uh, so when I say  _ the Relic Wars _ , you know what I’m saying.”

“How do  _ you  _ remember them? I’m--I’m enthralled now, dude, I thought that I was just  _ crazy _ , holy shit.”

Lucretia sighs, and rewrites everything she had planned in her head into a prolonged scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comment! kudo! tell a bud!  
> ren/lucretia forever in my heart  
> also i don't know too much about critrole but i read the description of profane soul blood hunters a while back and i was like, oh. that's the class i've wanted to write julia as this whole time. some sort of tuff warrior mage with fucked up religion. yes.


	4. KING OF KINGS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:  
> Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"  
> Nothing beside remains: round the decay  
> Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,  
> The lone and level sands stretch far away."
> 
> (ozymandias / shelley)
> 
> Julia asks questions. Lucretia meditates. Sin is contemplated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was raised uu-adjacent and i know very little about ~Sin~ in the christian sense but hey we love talking about it in our writing  
> this is an angsty chapter.

Lucretia is good at a lot of things. She had a century of youth to do whatever the hell she wanted, and she spent it developing her skills in every single activity that came to mind. She excelled in the arts, learned to paint and draw and play twelve instruments. She speaks eight languages. She can take down ten people on her own. She’s the best damn abjurer in the multiverse, and she’s not even a wizard.

Lucretia is good at a lot of things, but there’s one thing she’s great at.

Telling a fucking story.

She’s already said too much, by now: that she and (therefore) Magnus are aliens. That she’s trying to stop the apocalypse. And then, she has to factor in what Magnus might remember, and, then, what of those memories he would tell his wife. She decides not to name the others on instinct--Julia is indebted to her goddess to Fuck Up the undead, which means Barry and Lup are toast. Merle would be an easy target, too--fifty-seven deaths and a deadbeat dad, which for all of Julia’s talk of the importance of family, would not be an argument in his favor. Taako is famous, and, therefore, too easily accessible, and Davenport is--well, Julia would know what happened to Davenport,a dn then Julia would abandon her.

In the split second it takes her brain to calculate all of that, she sighs.

And then:

“I wasn’t lying to you when I said my name was Lucretia. I’m a human, and I’m from another planet. And I’m a bard. It’s all true.

“I grew up in a family known for its wealth. We hadn’t done much to earn it--my parents were politicians, technically. I was the first sign of--and I’m not bragging, Julia. I was taught never to do that. But I was the world’s greatest storyteller.”

Julia snorts.

“Well, I did tell a story good enough to make you believe some plain old horseshit for a full day, so. Anyway. My point is, I was a talented young woman. I was a prodigy. And I ran away from my parents, cut them out, after I graduated from college--age twelve. And I started a career. Ghostwrote, became famous from it. And--well. Eventually, I found a group that was symbolized by those twelve circles, in that tattoo of yours. They were researchers into a… force. A force that revolutionized the world. I--I don’t want to talk about it. What it did to the seven of us who took care of it.

“We were sent with it to study the multiverse. And the moment we left, our home was destroyed. Julia, I told you that I had lost my home, too. That was true. Most of what I have told you is true. You saw your home destroyed yesterday Julia. I saw it, too, and I felt sick, because it wrung my heart into dryness; I could not imagine the pain of losing a home twice. It’s maybe selfish of me to think first of Magnus, but--I’m only human. You understand the value of family in someone’s life, Julia. And when you are… well. Flung into a hellish time loop through universes and universes, planar systems and planar systems, for an eternity with only six others, that becomes your family, does it not? We were chased by the beast that had killed our home. We had nothing but each other.

“And Julia, when we found safety, it was only because we hurt your world by using that force for--for creation. The creation of war. We left a scar down this planet’s side. I--I didn’t want to see your people hurting any more. But--before I could do anything, it was like--they had just--forgotten. They couldn’t remember me. Each other. Our journey. They lost the most basic, inherent parts of them, and--and I gave them new lives. Found them places to belong.”

Julia is crying. Saltwater runs down her face, over years-old scars, and despite the knowledge of their age, Lucretia can’t help but think that it must sting. Lucretia is still readjusting to the idea of years-old scars.

Julia does not seem the type to cry. She is more prone to anger than sadness, to punching than weeping.

“So he’s not himself,” she says after a moment, “He’s just a--”

That’s not the comment Lucretia was expecting. She blinks, and she breathes, and she says, “He’s exactly himself. He’s frankly--more himself. He’s--I spoke casually. Too brutal, too dramatic. I’m an author, Julia, not a--not a psychologist. I’m--”

She dries her face, stares up at Lucretia. Bright, bright eyes, almost glowing. She is terrifying. Lucretia wishes she were dead. “You said inherent. You said  _ basic. _ How are you a  _ person  _ without your basics, your inherents?”

“I’ve been taken away from mine, too, Julia, and yet--I am still myself. I am still a--a fucking idiot. I am still a storyteller. I am still--I’m still Lucretia. And Magnus is still Magnus. And Julia, you’ve lost your home, which--which defined you, but you’re still... Julia.”

“You didn’t fucking know me before I lost my home.”

“I follow local politics.”

Julia shoots her a glare, and then, more gently, “I’ll tell you a story about my home if you tell me a story about yours.”

Again, unexpected. Lucretia was braced for an attack, for a follow up.

“We had two suns. A--a purple sky. The elements worked a little bit differently, I suppose. I never understood the science of sky color. But the sky was this--this beautiful violet color.  Lavender in the mornings. And there were so many stars, Julia, not just--the suns were closer, but the  _ stars _ \--and--but you guys, you have a moon. Which is amazing. We didn’t have any natural satellites. And--I love moons. I do. I just think they’re amazing. You don’t appreciate your moon enough, here.”

“You sound like a dork.”

“Forgive me for loving something.”

“Did you guys  _ have  _ moon elves?”

“Suns-elves, forest-elves, drow-elves, soul-elves. You’d be considered half-forest or half-soul, that’s usually where wood elves here fall in.”

“ _ Weird _ .” Julia looks at her with genuine fascination, a little bit of anger still creeping in. Lucretia sighs.

“I’m going to go run myself a bath. I think we both need time to process what we’ve learned about each other, and I feel like garbage,  _ so _ .” And she needs to construct untruths and half-truths, and needs to ward off the Raven Queen before Julia realizes that she’s died, and she needs to get in contact with Neverwinter. Julia (denied a chance to tell a story) just looks at her as she walks off into the--incredibly fancy--bathroom. Enchanted bath and so many complementary soaps, and--

“Lucretia,” says Lucas, when she contacts Neverwinter, and she groans, “Where the  _ hell  _ are you? We lost your signal in the mountains--”

“Dropped by Raven’s Roost. I saved one of the revolutionaries.”

Lucas whines, “You  _ know  _ the Governor’s an old friend of my mom’s, Lucretia!”

“Can I talk to Avi? Or someone else tolerable?”

“I’ll put you on with Davenport; then you’ll  _ want  _ to talk to me--”

“Issue is that I actually  _ like  _ Davenport.”

Lucas complains a bit more, but hands the stone over to Killian, who assures her that Fisher and Davenport are both fine. Killian’s a worrier--she keeps asking if Lucretia is  _ sure  _ that Julia is safe to be around, and if Lucretia needs backup, and if you need me and Carey to track down Kalen, we’d be super down--

“Feel free. I’m sure Julia would want to get him first, though--maybe wait until all is resolved.”

“That’s fair. Um. And--she does  _ blood magic _ ? That’s some spooky shit, ma’am, you know that, right? Like--I don’t know if you and Dav had it where  _ you  _ came from, but… it’s like, the way you described your place’s serious necromancy. Like, it’s--dark shit.”

“She seems like a well-adjusted young woman. And I know a lot of perfectly normal people in that other category--well. Not  _ normal _ , but sweet.”

“She tried to kill you and you’re calling her well-adjusted.”

“Yes.”

“You terrify me, ma’am.”

“Thank you.”

The bath is warm, full of tangerine-scented bubbles and gold shades. Some sort of mind-clearing enchantment; good for meditation. Lucretia can feel the gold seeping into her bones, and she relaxes. Breathes in, out. She sings a song to herself; some shitty song Magnus had on his playlist, back in the day, because he wanted to “relive his emotional teenage years.” And it sounds like the kind of song that Magnus would listen to as a shitty emotional teenger. But it’s stuck in her head, and she decides to chase the thought. She veers into a Lup song--upbeat but sad, and then a  Barry song, and then Merle, then Davenport, then Taako. Cycling through the six of them, none of her own. She doesn’t even know which would be her own, at this point. She is not a sad nineteen year-old girl anymore, a girl who launched herself into space for the sake of a story; she is hardened, bold, now. She has become someone else. She wasn’t trying to lie when she told Julia that she was still herself without the people that forged her. But, then, maybe she was lying. Maybe lying is the only thing she can do right now. What else is storytelling if not lying?

She remembers hearing that, once, that all writers are good liars. She didn’t think of herself as a good liar, not at first. 

Tangerine, gold.

Her stone buzzes. She picks it up. A voice, not-too-familiar, “Jules?”

“I’m--I’m quite sorry, I’m the woman who’s, uh. Been helping her out. I bought her a new stone, actually, I can connect you with her frequency and--”

“Oh, cool, uh-- _ thank you _ ,” she can hear his smile, and she blinks and she sees gap-teeth and a pale scar down a dark face and dimples, “You--you really, uh. She has trouble with… people, y’know, but she’s really--she’s really grateful for you. Fuck, I’m grateful for you, just-- _ shit _ , dude, is there a way we can, like--”

“No, no, I don’t need anything. Just so long as the two of you can find safety, I’ll be satisfied.”

She is a white knight. She is a liar.

“Honestly,” he says, “You--it’s--it’s hard to imagine what would’ve happened if she’d died. I don’t really have too many people lookin’ out for me, y’know? And--well. Neither does she. But we got each other’s backs. And now--well, I gotta have your back, too.”

“And vice versa, Mr. Burnsides. I--I just want the two of you to have calm.”

“I mean, we’re gonna have to kill Kalen. But after that--”

“I’ll keep my eye out for him. The man should burn in the deepest of hells.”

“Yeah, yeah, cool, uh--just. Thank you, ma’am. My lady? Madam?”

“Lucretia is fine.”

“ _ Lucretia _ ,” again, a grin, audible, “I’ll remember that.”

That’s what he said when they first met, too, eighteen and in a training arena. She wasn’t much of a fighter, then. He wasn’t much of a hero, then. People change. People forget.

She patches Julia in and hangs up. And she breathes.

She thinks, she should call Ren. Get to know her. Get to know somebody new. She should tell Julia everything. Get to the truth. Get to the core of the story, the themes laid out on paper like so. (Bonds, love, loss, fear, hunger, ascendance. She wonders, did John become what he became to protect people? Is she like him? She wishes it weren’t within the realm of possibility).

There was a poem that she had read, once. She didn’t have a copy of it on the ship, but she remembered it just fine. A classic.  _ look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. _ She wonders if that poem exists here. It was about a statue, she knows. And she thinks of statues, and, maybe, were she to be Judged, her sin would be hubris.

“Thirteen,” says Julia, when Lucretia exits the bath, wrapped in market-clothes and Julia’s leather jacket.

“Nineteen, for your husband.”

“How?”

“Istus.”

_ “Istus.” _

“Julia, I promise you, were your patron to know our situation, She would pardon us. How is Magnus?”

“He said he spoke to you. How did you die thirteen times?”

“Accidents, mostly. Why do you ask about me and not him?”

“Because you’re smarter than me or him. Were I in your situation, I would’ve died more than him, probably.”

“Accidents, mostly.”

She amends her previous thought. Her sins would be hubris and dishonesty. They are not deadly, no, but maybe being kept alive is her punishment. 

Nothing beside remains: round the decay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :0


	5. EURYDICE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We may call Eurydice forth from the world of the dead, but we cannot make her answer; and when we turn to look at her we glimpse her only for a moment, before she slips from our grasp and flees."
> 
> (the handmaid's tale / margaret atwood)
> 
> The girls have an important talk or two. Lucretia gets into wine tasting. Julia is charming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for mind-altering magic (consensually used), alcohol consumption, and a lot of talk about death.

Lucretia doesn’t fall asleep, and knows that she’ll regret it in the morning. She doesn’t stay still, either. She paces, mostly, can’t even bring herself to write. Julia is half-meditating, and Lucretia is somehow unhappy with the lonely she’s made her home in.

So she wakes her up. Reflexively, Julia somersaults and tries to attack, but Lucretia dodges, and apologizes for the shock. 

“Can you cook, or should I order?”

“Order. Magnus cooks. I’m--kind of garbage at it.”

“Me, too. Uh. What’s… I’m not too familiar with cuisine, here, still, and--”

Julia orders some rock-gnomish, lays back down on the twin bed she’s claimed, and says, “I don’t know how I feel about you,” blatantly, like conversation is always so blunt, so honest. “I don’t trust you.”

“You have--I’ve given you reasons to distrust me. I’d prefer you didn’t, though.”

“You’re a fucking  _ alien  _ who, like--level twenty bard--”

“Yes.”

Julia sits up and blinks at her. Lucretia blinks back. “You think that--you think that’s  _ normal _ ? You think I  _ expected  _ to be--dragged out of my home as it burned by an alien sister-in-law who has done nothing but lie to me, and who dumps her whole life story on me, still redacting some important shit, mind you, and then--dude. You understand that I’m a little bit freaked out by, like, everything about you, right? Like, I’ve seen some shit. I exchanged my, like--my whole life force for the power of the goddess of death. I overthrew a corrupt government with physical force. And somehow, you’re the weirdest person I’ve met in my entire life.”

Lucretia laughs, smiles at her. Julia glares. This goes on for a while.

“Like, you’re a--Lucretia? That  _ is  _ your real name, right?”

“You’ve already asked me that.”

“And I don’t trust you? So, might as well ask again.”

“It’s my name. I’ve had it since I was born.” Lucretia is exhausted by this conversation. She sees herself in a mirror on the wall behind Julia, and she  _ looks  _ exhausted. The bright red scarf over her hair is falling apart, and her posture is terrible. “I’ve been told it suits me.”

“And it does, I just--” Julia stares at her, and says, “Look, I’m sorry, I just--I need answers. And I think I know how to get them.”

“How do you intend to do that?”

“Fuckin’ magic, man. I only got two spell slots, but I’m half-good at magic.”

“You don’t know Zone of Truth.”

“I don’t, but there are  _ other  _ ways to interrogate people, Lucretia.” Julia rolls her eyes, “I just want to know what’s goin’ on, this isn’t, like, a--an assassination attempt. Do you trust me?”

“I trust you, yes.”

“Cool. So--know that if I don’t  _ like  _ people, I don’t ask for permission before I charm them. You’re not in big company. Are you down for an hour of just--y’know. Chilling the fuck out and spilling beans all over me?”

“What the  _ hell _ \--I mean, yes, but that was some rough phrasing, Julia. I’ll fail my save, fine, just--uh. What the  _ hell  _ do you--”

“Great!” And Julia grabs Lucretia’s shoulder, and her mind feels--

Soft, all of the sudden. Lucretia knows enchantment magic quite well, knows the ways it can course through someone’s nerves, each synapse hit with an electrified numbness, but this is different, more like a cleric’s spell than a warlock or a wizard. It’s rustically hospitable, she thinks, and she smiles, lightly. She looks at Julia, and that softness continues, increases exponentially on a curve. She knows that this is the magic, but she does--she likes Julia a lot. Soft and strong and soft and strong. Her prosthesis is hollow and metal, and Lucretia wants to trace its shapes out. She’s smart, too, clearly--she invented this, and she designed it.

“Lucretia,” Julia says, and her voice is magnetic, “I’m gonna need you to just--talk. I’m very sorry that I had to charm you to do this.”

“That’s okay,” because it is. She touches Julia’s hand. There are calluses. “You want the truth? I’ve mostly given it to you--”

“How have you died thirteen times?”

Lucretia doesn’t really know  _ how _ , because the seven of them could never really explain it past “bonds.” So that’s what she says, “Bonds. Between the seven of us. They were what--okay, not bonds, like--well, yes, emotional bonds, but the manifestations thereof. Physical. They brought us back whenever we passed through the breach--between dimensions. Your eyes are really nice--”

Julia laughs a little, tilts her head. Like a bird. Because of the Raven Queen, probably, Lucretia thinks, and then she nods. Julia smiles, and, gently, “Do you get high off of Enchantment? Maggie, too. It’s cool. Is that an alien thing?”

“Yes. It is. Magic on our plane acts differently than here; I don’t need music to be a bard, we don’t have warlocks or--or whatever you’d consider yourself, or sorcerers, just--wizards, and then the divine, and then bards, and--you get the gist, right?”   


“Uh. Kind of.”

“I mean, I guess what we called wizards are sorcerers here, but mechanically, they’re more similar to your wizards. Natural magic’s the only similarity. Most of us have it. And--holy  _ shit  _ you’ve got matching eye scars?”   


“Yeah! Yeah, yeah, uh--”

“When I made them forget, he, uh--he woke up first, and he asked me where he got it, and,” she smiles, she can’t  _ not  _ smile, “He got it back when we were at the Institute because he tried to, uh. To domesticate a wolf from the plane of magic. I told him it was a bar-fight.”

Julia looks at her oddly. Her eyes are such an interesting color; people didn’t usually have light eyes, back home. Everyone on the crew save Merle and Barry had black eyes--and Julia’s edge close to Merle’s in color, hazel or amber or something she’d say in a nicer way were she not charmed, and, “Can you dispel the charm, I’m trying to think of a word?”

" _You_ made them forget?” she asks, but she drops the charm, and Lucretia feels blood rush into her head.

“I--it’s more complicated than that. There is nuance in the situation, Julia”

The word is  _ honey _ , she thinks, and she doesn’t say it aloud.

“You acted like--”

“Because you’d hate me.”

“Why would I hate you if you ended the war that killed people I loved? I--I thought it was a natural forgetting, a--I thought you didn’t do  _ shit _ to stop the Relics. Which, like, you implied, so don’t ask, I already know. Which one did you make?”

“The stick. He made the cup, neither of ours really--neither of them did too much harm. Not even on your side of the continent.”

“The Bulwark Staff and the Temporal Chalice? So-- _ neither of you  _ made the Bell, right?”

“No, no, I don’t--Barry wouldn’t even tell us what the bell did, he didn’t--he thought it might be tempting.”

Julia looks sick, but she still deadpans, “Who doesn’t want to live forever?” Lucretia feels sick to her stomach. She never wanted this. None of them ever wanted to let a planet burn and die, and here, a woman who has just seen her town do exactly that, is telling her that they failed in their promise.

“I certainly don’t.”

“Right answer. You know what your friend’s fuckin’ bell did? It took my father’s soul out of his body. My dad and I had to kill him to put him out of his misery. You understand what that--”

“Is that why you swore yourself to your Queen?”

“Yes, uh, She knew that I would be down, and that I wanted revenge, and, well--”

A knock on the door. The food that they ordered. It feels like that was ages ago.

Lucretia pays, opens the box with strongly-spiced vegetables in it, starts to eat. She hands Julia her box--pheasant, fried--and Julia takes it, but she doesn’t open it. Instead, she starts crying.

“You should eat.”

Julia shakes her head, says, “Kalen--”

“Will die. I’ll make sure of it, I promise, Julia, I owe you that much.”

“You saved my life.”

“And I complicated it.”

“Some complications are good. You’ve complicated my life twice. One brought me Mags, another brought me you.”

"I'm not a blessing, Julia. I'm just here to help."

She casts, opens Julia’s box and levitates food toward her. Julia bites it out of the air. “You don’t strike me as the mother hen type.”

“I’m not. I just don’t like seeing people in pain not taking care of themselves. Eat your damn food. I spent money on it, and shit.”

“Not yours. It's stolen money from a police officer.”

“And isn’t that  _ grand _ , Miss Waxmen?”

Julia takes another bite of her food. “You’re terrible.”

“I did what I had to do. Like you did. For your father.”

“Put your family out of their misery.”   


“Put the  _ world  _ out of its misery. I did what was right. And I feel guilty, yes, but--I never get to talk about this. Maureen’s the only person who knows, and she doesn’t--she really only wanted me for information. And. Well. The sexual part of our relationship was mutual.”

“Maureen Miller.”

“We both needed information. I diverted the things she sent Kalen’s way to you.”

“So  _ you’re  _ the mysterious Miller Labs employee who sent us weaponry. Makes sense.”

“I wanted to stop her, but they were educated together. And, well--”

“Bros before alien fuckbuddies.”

“Um. Yes. Bros before alien fuckbuddies.”

"Fuck Maureen Miller."

"She's not a great person. Her son's worse. But. She's not so great herself."

Julia is distracted.

“That’s why you become bros  _ with  _ your alien fuckbuddy. Then it turns into love, and then marriage. I guess it also helped that we didn’t know the complicating fact of  _ he’s an alien _ , but, uh. Might’ve actually  _ encouraged me _ ,” she wiggles her eyebrows. Lucretia shakes her head. Julia continues, “ _ Fuck _ . I just--this is so terrible, Lucretia. It is. And--I don’t--I don’t know how to feel about you, or about--I haven’t even had time to fuckin’  _ mourn _ .”

“Do you want to? Mourn?”

“Eulogizing over gnomish fried food with a necromancer-adjacent stranger doesn’t seem like the best way to go about that.”

“There’s a minibar. I can pour wine. And, look, Julia, take it from someone who’s been to… a lot of unconventional funerals? Sometimes, the best way to mourn is in the wrong way.”

“Well,” says Julia, “Pour me a glass.”

She does--it’s a red, rich, oaky. Something Davenport might like, she notes, for later. He liked vanilla. She made fun of him for it, once. One of his twenty-three funerals, she put vanilla orchids on his gravestone, and Merle, through tears, had said he’d have liked that.

“My father would have liked this,” she says, instead of anything else. “Would either of yours?”

“Dad thought wine snobbery was for city folks,” Julia shakes her head, “And it is. And my father, he, uh, he was more of a whites kinda guy.”

Lucretia laughs, at that, and she toasts, “To Raven’s Roost. A city so lovely, it forced me to tolerate the cold.”

“To my home,” Julia repeats, “Flawed as it may have been, it was always that. To my people.”

“To your people.”

“To my family, my friends, our blood, our work.”

“To revolution.”

Julia downs her glass, winces at the taste, and pours another. “To fucking revolution.”

There’s silence, for a moment, not quite uncomfortable, but not comfortable, either, not by any means.

“You saved my fuckin’ life. You know that? And--look, I’m not afraid to die. But death is a reward for a life well-lived. And I haven’t lived enough. I wouldn’t break outta the Astral Plane, but, uh. I wouldn’t’ve been opposed to someone trying to help.”

“And your patron would be okay with that?”

Julia shrugs, “I’m a rebel. She oughta expect it from me. Anyway, I’m prob’ly gettin’ a job from her when I die, so, like. Wouldn’t need a breakout. But. Regardless. You saved my fuckin’ life, Lucretia. And I owe you. But I wish you’d saved everyone else, too.” A sip. She’s on her third glass.

“I do, too.”

“Are you a good person?”   


“I hope so, Julia. Am I?”

“I hope so, too.” And, with hesitation, “I’m just not sure yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're almost done w/ our first act!
> 
> comment! kudo!


	6. YOUR SIDE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hey baby, think you need a friend to stand here by your side?/  
> Yes, you do (your side)/  
> Ooh, baby, now you can depend on me to make things right (things right)/  
> Please don't bet that you'll ever escape me/  
> Once I get my sights on you."
> 
> (license to kill / gladys knight)
> 
> A reunion is had. Lucretia panics. Julia says the F Word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :0

The days spent in Goldcliff are not wasted. She gets to know Julia, and she has some real-actual meals, and she makes some city-government connections she’s been trying to secure for years. Ren stays over--visits, flirts. Talks about how she’s following in the footsteps of her hero. Kisses. More than kisses. Bids farewell. She’s off to the Woven Gulch. Lucretia considers following, but that’s a Relic she doesn’t think she can recover, at least not yet.

Julia talks.

“You’ve never had a long-term partner?”

“I mean--a teammate and I had a… quasi-relationship, I suppose. But it’s difficult to explain, Julia. The bonds forged on our journey were… different. Not the same as the kind of bonds we forge here. But. The whole time-loop situation kind of made it difficult to date outside of the crew, and I was nineteen when we left.”

“You were shot into space at nineteen?”

“Magnus, too.”

“Yeah, but--well, you’re a different kind of dumbass, I guess.”

Julia has taken to tinkering with Lucretia’s tech from back home. She’s fascinated by it in a way that, even after all this time, Lucretia finds disconcerting, though she is charmed by Julia’s aesthetically incoherent love of The Sci-Fi/Fantasy Barenaked Ladies. She’s also talking to her patron more frequently than Lucretia would like, maybe--nothing about her, which is unexpected, but, rather, about Kalen. A relief, a blessing, but anti-necromancy Death Gods tend to trigger Lucretia’s anxiety. She knows that Barry wouldn’t accept her help--for good reason--but she needs to ward him off from Her. She’s definitely already latched onto him somehow, given that he hasn’t already been dragged to the Astral Plane since the two of them met up in Phandalin three years ago. She can’t track him anymore.

She shouldn’t worry. Worrying is for later. Right now, she needs to worry about getting out of here before Magnus shows up. She doesn’t think she can bear the interaction, the sight of him. She can avoid it, no problem, she has a stealth pro--

“Jules!”

Fuck. 

At least Bane has to pay for a kicked down door. That’s good. Julia has already jumped onto Magnus’ arms, tackling him to the ground, and they’re kissing, and he’s crying, and she can sneak out, okay, okay, she’s got time. She can sneak out.

“Lucretia, don’t try and run out on me, you need to meet him.”

Fuck Julia. Fuck Julia to the deepest pits of the deepest hells in the worst planes imaginable. Fuck Julia, who is still on the floor, who is back to kissing her husband, who looks happier than Lucretia has seen her since they met. And fuck Magnus, whose dumbassery was not cured by forgetting his own semi-immortality.

“Hi. Nice to meet you. I’m Lucretia.”

Magnus does not break, but he waves, gives her a peace sign.

“Well, my job is done, so I’d best hit the road. I have people in Neverwinter I need to speak to, and Bain is willing to loosen portals for me, so--”

Magnus and Julia have broken apart, and Magnus is looking at her directly, now. “Are you, like, some kinda--a James Bond type?”

“Absolutely,” she deadpans, “I have a printed-out and laminated licence to kill, I bed many a beautiful woman, and I only drink cold and weak martinis.”

“Who’s James Bond?” Julia asks, and then, her eyes widen, and she covers her mouth excitedly like she’s just solved a puzzle, “Nevermind, don’t answer, that’s a later thing. Uh.”

“Also, I was notably first portrayed by Sci-Fi/Fantasy Sean Connery.”

“Cool.” Magnus is grinning, and it’s almost nice to be seen by him in the same way Julia saw her--as some mysterious warrior, rather than Lucretia; some chaotic-neutral hero-type, rather than Lucretia. “I just--honestly, I wanna--before you go, I want to talk to you. Jules said I’d like you, and--she likes you--” Julia elbows him, but she smiles, and it’s a helluva good smile, only recently unleashed in full. “Look, I just--you really--you saved her, and you helped me find her, and you just--I wanna buy you a drink, or, like--can we just--can we chill with you? Or, or--we could go to Neverwinter with you--”

“That’d be nice,” Julia says, offhandedly, “Neverwinter’s big. Kalen knows we’re near Goldcliff; that’ll throw him off, too.”

“His men haven’t found me yet,” Magnus says, “Which is good. For the better. And that one adoption agency’s in Neverwinter, too, we could--” he wiggles his eyebrows, and shit, Lucretia really wants to be out of the room. She’s not family, not really, not anymore, and taking them to Neverwinter would mean that Julia would want to explore the foundations of her organization, and that would mean inoculating Magnus, and--

She breathes. She can drop them off and abandon ship in the middle of the night. She needs to get back, and they’re both too stubborn to relent, here. She knows them well enough for that. 

Magnus has changed, though. If he remembered, she supposes he’d think the same of her. They both have more scars, now, ones that have stuck. She wonders if there are any matches, like Julia’s eye scar.  She doesn’t get a close look, doesn’t let herself focus. His hair is longer, now, past his shoulders. He’s got less freckles, now--less sun exposure, over time. He looks happier, though, softer. She knows that she herself is the opposite, sharper, sadder.

She grips the Bulwark staff a little bit tighter.

“We’ll head out now, then.”

“I can fix the door.”

“Don’t. Bain’s plenty rich and I can blackmail him if he starts shit.”

“Maggie, Bain’s a cop. And Lucretia here has so much shit on him, it’s rad.”

“Okay. Won’t fix the door then. To Neverwinter?”

“Let me make a call.”

And she does, and she casts the spell, lets the energy leave her body as she just thinks  _ Neverwinter _ , and then--

And then, she’s in the base, and Killian is staring at her blankly, and, well,  _ shit _ . She has to go back into Leader Mode, rather than I Work Alone Mode, rather than Alien Sister-In-Law Mode. And Killian says, “You want me to get them inoculated, or--?”

“Inoculated?” Magnus asks, “ _ Very  _ Secret Agent-y. Are you the Q?”

“What?”

“Inside joke,” Lucretia offers, “Uh, give me a moment--I meant to get us to somewhere a little bit more--you know. Not underground secret society. But. Well, this is where we’ve landed, I guess! This is wonderful. Killian, this is Julia and Magnus. They overthrew a government, once This is Killian. She’s a valued member of my team. And she’s going to give me some alone time, I hope, because I did not mean to  _ land  _ here--”

“You  _ meant  _ to go to a death-trap in the Felicity Wilds, yes. But you made the smart decision to turn around. Which one of you’s the blood hunter?”

Julia raises her hand. Killian grins.

“Dope. Okay, I’m gonna go grab lunch. Avi keeps talking about the soup place--”

“It’s good soup,” says Magnus, “Had the lemongrass last week. Really spicy, but, like, good spicy.” He dusts himself off, adds on, “So what’s this inoculation thing, though? Because I want soup, but, uh--”

“Lemme take him--”

“No!” says Lucretia, a moment too late, because Magnus and Killian have already rushed out the door.

Julia is laughing, and then, she rolls her eyes, “He’s not gonna kill you, y’know.”

“He might. I’m not a good person, Julia, not in his story. I’m a villain. An obstacle.”

“You gave him a home.”

“And I took him from another.”

“Is the second one worth less?”

“It’s worth  _ differently _ .”

“You’re not a villain in my story, you know. I kinda like you. You’re intriguing. James Bond intriguing?”

“He’s an asshole. Magnus and I watched the movies mostly ironically. And a movie is a moving picture. Like a play.”

“A projection?”

“Yes.”

“Cool. Please know that my interest in alien tech and my bloodlust for Kalen  _ will  _ serve as most of my icebreakers between the two of you forever and ever always.”

“Forever and ever always?”

“I mean. We’re not--like, we’re friends, right? We’re--”

“You’ve called me evil in the past.”

“Not the worst way to make friends, I dunno,” Julia leans against the wall, just as an audible splash echoes through the safehouse, and that’s maybe better than Lucretia’s  _ expected  _ reaction."

“Not the worst way to react to learning you’re an alien,” she mutters, and Julia laughs. “I thought he’d run up to me with a knife and a--”

“Is that what you  _ think  _ he’d do, or what you’d  _ want  _ him to do?”

“You do blood magic for a goddess for the sake of death.”

“And you’re my friend and you want my husband to murder you so that you can be punished for ending a war that mentally destroyed you, him, and your entire family, and denied him a chance to meet one of his fathers-in-law. Speaking objectively.”

“Touché.”

Davenport is asleep. She can hide him, or she can inoculate him, and just ruin this whole mission. She didn’t tell Julia about him, thank Gods, and--

She hasn’t cast Tiny Hut in a while. Maybe, just maybe--no, that’s a step too far, even if she’s already past the cliff’s edge. 

And Avi runs out, carrying an egg, yelling, “A hot guy ran into the tank, and also, there’s an egg? Let’s--let’s--uh. It’s been there since you left, I thought I’d make it a surprise, but it cracked, today, a little bit, and--”

Well.

That makes things a little bit easier.

Lucretia doesn’t save people anymore. 

Lucretia really  _ shouldn’t  _ save people anymore.

Instead of saying that, she says, “Welcome, Julia, to the Bureau of Outstanding Fucking Balance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end act i.  
> next up, a lunar interlude.
> 
> comment! kudo! tell a friend!


	7. INTERLUDE: TROLLEY PROBLEM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied-up (or otherwise incapacitated) people lying on the tracks. You are standing next to a lever that controls a switch. If you pull the lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track and the five people on the main track will be saved. However, there is a single person lying on the side track. You have two options:
> 
> Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.  
> Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.  
> Which is the more ethical option?"
> 
> (philippa foot)
> 
> Arguments are had. Lucretia casts spells for symbolic purposes. Julia latches onto a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> julia pov interlude!!! yes!!!

Magnus and Lucretia are arguing in the next room, and Julia feels more out-of-it than she’s felt in her entire life. As someone who swore a dark pact with the death goddess and overthrew a corrupt government by the age of twenty-seven, she’s been out-of-it a  _ lot _ , which makes this particularly remarkable.

These arguments have been going on for a week. Magnus will come to bed gentle, Lucretia will bring her coffee the way she likes it, but around each other, there’s a fissure torn through the earth around them all. She spends most of her free time with the strangers around here--Davenport, a pilot, a member of the old crew with a half-broken brain, speaking with a stutter and claiming Lucretia saved his life, too. Carey and Killian mercs who Julia will try and set up, because they are visibly in love, even if they claim they’re just friends. Avi, who tinkers with her. Boyland, who’s a good father-adjacent figure, who’s helping her cope with a loss that she hasn’t had time to process.

But it’s a small secret base. Julia can’t ignore her husband and her friend calling each other words in languages she doesn’t understand but that she  _ knows  _ are cruel.

“In-laws, right?” Avi jokes halfheartedly when Lucretia has  _ clearly  _ invoked a Zone of Truth around her and Magnus specifically, which is an entirely nonsensical move, but it’s a fucking funny one to watch. He hands her some wires. She hands him a screwdriver.

“There’re a lot of levels of betrayal goin’ on here. I’m--taking sides here’s tough, y’know? And I’m, like--I’m  _ super  _ opinionated and judgemental.”

“Yeah, I’ve known you for six days, I can--I can tell.”

“Yeah, but--like, both of them are right? Is this what gray morality is?”

“I guess? I dunno your family’s deal. I just know that those two are--holy shit, did you see him carve that?”   


A wooden hand, flipping a wooden bird. She didn’t see him carve that.

Julia dispels the silence charm Lucretia had put up, if only for the sake of entertainment, and because the variant of sign language that Lucretia and Magnus are using intermittently along with spoken word is very different from the one that Julia learned the alphabet of in primary school.

“--If I had  _ asked,  _ you know that Barry would’ve immediately turned it into me not caring about finding Lup--”

“And about you doing shit  that’ll  _ cut off reality _ \--”

“Oh, do you have a better idea, then?”

“No, but, like--Taako might? He didn’t even weigh in on the two plans, he just--”   


“Yeah, he took her side, which is understandable, and you  _ almost  _ took my side, and--”

“And I think we all understand that you do care about Lup, and Barry would just be stubborn about it until Taako and I talked to him, and--”

“Would you have talked to him?”

“I mean, it’s my fish, I think using  _ my  _ fish to end a war would be, like--something I’d be down to help with.”

“Well, we can’t go back in time. That’s impossible.”

“ _ Un _ less--”

“No. No. I am no-ing this. Fuck you, if you invoke improv, and fuck Taako for teaching you what improv was, because I  _ know  _ he did it to piss me off.  I fundamentally--”

“I mean, I made it for a  _ reason _ \--”

Julia stands up.

“I like that idea, actually? I mean, I’d wanna be involved, duh, but--how’s about another road trip? Ren was headed that way.”

And Julia winks. Lucretia blinks blankly in response, clearly having failed to notice the dispelled silence. She says a, “I wouldn’t argue in favor of time travel for the sake of  _ seeing a hookup _ of mine--”

“I think that love is the best reason for anything,” Julia says, “Other than justice. And this is both of those things, because, Luke, I love you, you’re a friend, you saved my ass, but, uh. This is maybe morally cleaner for  _ all of us _ , and also, having a team of century year-old aliens might help us kill Kalen before he can do too much harm? So, uh, kind of a win-win-win if you ask me.”

“How are you speaking in Voidfish static?” Avi asks, and Julia shushes him.

Magnus wraps his arms around her and calls her a genius. She kisses him, lifts him up.

“Majority rules, Creesh,” Magnus taunts, and Lucretia groans out a  _ “Fine _ . But it’s just the three of us, okay? No one else can remember--it’s only the people who use it who remember, right?”

“That’s what I  _ think  _ it does?”

“Cool. Untested tech. Love it. Experimental.” Julia smiles, only half-sarcastic.

Lucretia sighs, and holds her staff a little bit tighter.

“Then, let’s go to the desert. Let’s head on out to a  _ gulch _ , yes. Fine. Wonderful, actually. Avi, you’re in charge.”

And so, the three of them set off.

Julia is  _ so ready  _ to time travel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chekov's temporal chalice


	8. A HUNDRED TIMES EASIER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It would be a hundred times easier  
> If we were young again  
> But as it is  
> And it is  
> To think that we could stay the same
> 
> (two slow dancers / mitski)
> 
> The gang makes it to the Woven Gulch. Lucretia fantasizes about a future that never was. Julia talks to her Goddess, and her weird goth kid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :P

Magnus is already a ways ahead, navigating loudly, when they end up in the Woven Gulch. He  _ thinks  _ he remembers where he put the cup, apparently, which, great, wonderful, good for him.

Julia, meanwhile, is asking Lucretia strategic questions. Which is, abjectly, terrible, because Lucretia  _ doesn’t  _ want to do this. “If I kill Kalen,” she asks, the most direct she’s been, “How do I make sure no one takes over in his place? How do I subtly work in, oh, I’ve been seeing this guy for a while--oh my  _ God  _ how do I explain this to the Raven Queen--”

“You’re preventing unnatural deaths, and you’re killing a man who caused unnatural deaths.”

“Okay, and the  _ rest _ ?”

She rolled with that a lot faster than Lucretia thought she would. She’s a damn good liar, so she shouldn’t be surprised, but Julia should probably know better than that by now.

“You’re going to have to be incredibly careful, is what you’re going to have to do. I’m not sure if you’ll pop up on the Starblaster with us or in Raven’s Roost, Julia, I can’t--I can’t tell you the way the timeline that we haven’t created yet goes.”

" _But_ you have twenty INT.”

“And Magnus has twenty STR, that doesn’t mean he can hold up the sky. We’re not gods.”

“You’re just quasi-immortal beings from another plane of existence.”

“Yes.”

“Really clears things up, Luke, thanks for that.”

Lucretia answers questions with the same gusto for the twenty minutes it takes for Magnus to find the town he put the cup in, run back to them, and say, “They built a statue of me, you guys. Julia, they carved me out of stone.”

Lucretia remembers a joke Taako made once, and she grips her staff until her knuckles crack. A little girl rushes to pull Magnus away, and Lucretia follows, Julia already in front of her. It’s hot here, hotter than it was in Lucretia’s hometown, which is rare, for this planet. Red dirt lines the streets, a bird lands on Lucretia’s shoulder and doesn’t leave.

It’s rustic as all get-out. The bird chirps. Lucretia chirps back, some curse in the animal language. The bird pecks her ear.

Well. Magnus has walked into a house, and he’s hugging a man, and so on, and so on. She should follow. But she doesn’t. There’s a fountain by the statue of Magnus, so she sits on its edge.

Ren approaches. Of course Ren does. She must’ve gotten here a day or two ago, if she came here by cart. She’s sweating, her face shaded by a wide-brimmed straw  hat--drow can’t bear this amount of sunlight, here. Rustic as all  _ goddamned _ get-out.

“You followin’ me, Miss Lucretia?”

“My brother, actually,” and she rolls her eyes, “Julia’s husband. He’s,” and she points at the statue.

“Of course he is. Uh. If you want somethin’ to do, I’m settin’ up shop, could use some help movin’ things around.”

“Of course,” she says, shooing the bird, who doesn’t budge. Ren coos at them, calls them cute. Lucretia apologizes.

She’s setting glasses into a lovely looking case, commissioned from one S.W. several years ago by one I.R., when Ren touches her shoulder, and she smiles, thinks about the could-have-beens, the life she would have given herself if she’d forgotten, too, or if the world had never ended. A wife, a studio, a life--but would she be happy? Would she be bold? Would she have a family?

Ren’s hand is no longer on her shoulder, and Lucretia opens her eyes, not having realized they were closed in the first place.

“So, what’s the Visitor doing back in town?” Ren asks, across the room already, “Just checkin’ in?”

“He left something with, uh, Elder Jack. He’s here to pick it up, and he wanted some emotional support. So…”

“Checkin’ in on the ex, then. Huh.” Ren examines a frame tilts her head.

“Sorry?”

“Yeah, they--it’s just rumors. But this is the great romantic hist’ry tour of the… whatever your surname is family, I s’pose?”

“Yes, I--I suppose. What’s in the frame?”

“Poster of Taako. My inspiration, the, uh, the wizard chef?” She looks embarrassed. Lucretia tries to act like it’s normal.

“I’ve heard of him, yes. He’s--he’s quite impressive. I used to travel with him, you know, and--look, where did you live four and-a-half years ago?”

“Underdark. Southwestern part of it. Why do you  _ ask _ ? Are you--”

Okay, so this time travel idea is bad. It’s bad! It will ruin lives. It is a bad idea and she was right, and she did the right thing in giving everybody lives. This is justification. Wonderful. Eyes wide, she stutters a bit as she offers weak excuse for specificity, “Just curious if we did a show where you lived while I worked with him?”

Ren laughs, “Nah, it was three years ago. Just missed you. Is it straight, from your angle?”

“Little to the left. I--I have to go, uh, Julia is calling me--”

She runs off, but Ren grabs her arm, kisses her soft, “Come back soon, won’t you, Lu?”

She feels blood rush down her face, “Of course. Of course I will.”

Magnus is by the fountain with Julia, looking around, and there’s something in his too-big cargo shorts pocket that is definitely cup-sized, and, okay, Lucretia has to stop this. The bird is  _ still  _ on her shoulder, latched onto her sleeve with a vice grip, and she doesn’t even bother to try and throw it off as she runs, out of breath, “We can’t go back.”

“Why the fuck not?” Julia is chewing gum. She always chews cherry gum, rather than mint, a fun fact that Lucretia knows about her from time and exposure, none of which would have happened were it not for her making Magnus forget.

“Taako--inspired Ren. Remember? So, like--if he never--”

“We can still introduce them?”

“I’m not budging on this Lucretia, it’s--it’s the only way we can get everyone back together without losing the team. I--I need to do this.”

“I can save my town, you two can save the world, and you’re thinking about a girl you hooked up with two weeks ago, Creesh--”

“I--I just want everyone to be happy.”

“Like Jules said. We can introduce ‘em. Now, hand on the cup, let’s do this damn thing.”

She exhales. She’s being stupid. Well. Not stupid. Unwise. But wisdom’s her third-lowest stat, so. She’s allowed to be unwise, sometimes. Isn’t she? She is.

The cup is duller than she remembers, rich gold desaturated by, however ironically, the passage of time. It’s got tiny birds carved into it--detailwork that would be impressive no matter who made it, but Lucretia knows that her own appreciation is magnified by knowing how restless its creator usually was. Is. She needs to get used to the present tense.

Julia is poring over it, too. She’s never gotten close to the staff, probably out of fear, but she’s looking at this with an intensity that Lucretia has only seen her use for matters of interesting alien technology or Lucretia’s tattoos.

Lucretia touches the cup. Julia does, too.

The bird flies away, and, more suddenly than she’d expect, all she sees around her is white, and Julia next to her.

And Magnus ahead of them, the cup in his hands, flashing through his own timeline, stuttering at twenty. A little boy with a bandaid on his cheek and a tooth missing, an older man with gray streaked hair to his shoulders, a young man with a bear-inflicted scratch down his arm, and so on, and so on. He doesn’t speak, but he nods. Julia looks over to Lucretia. (For approval?)

Lucretia does not nod, but she runs forward, and--

And she is in her old room, the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Mitski poster she’d brought from home half fallen down, ink staining her arms. But she’s not alone, like she should’ve been at this moment. Magnus is blacked out, the cup in his hands, and Julia is staring at her and grinning wildly. Her hair is a bit longer, her eyes a bit brighter, her face a bit less scarred, her body a bit less inked, but she is still herself. Her prosthesis is different--less ornate, less high-tech. But she is still the same.

“So this is what you looked like back then? God, you were a  _ baby _ !”

“I don’t know what year this is. I think it’s--I think it’s after Lup left.” She stands up. Her staff is not in her hands, so she picks up her quarterstaff from by her bed. It’s charred from a spar with Lup that happened their second year on this planet. A stress reliever. Where Lup had opened her mouth, claiming a proposal, but then walked off, calling it stupid. She was gone the next week.

Lucretia knows what today is. Magnus should be in his room, carving a duck.

Fisher, in the corner, chimes unhelpfully.

“You wanna wake him up?” Julia asks.

“No, you do the honors, uh--we should have a story for you. Um. Let’s devise that real fast, because, no offense, but his won’t  be believable.”

“I’m Madam Rosalind Dragondreamer, a noble with a dark secret--”

“Is the secret that you murder?”

“That’s not--relevant.”

“You can keep your given name. I mean a story as to how Magnus and I brought a living half-elf woman onto the ship, and also, who we kept private--”

“Concubine.”

“Absolutely not.”

“He’s more subtle than I am when it comes to romance. You can just say he snuck out and got married to me when we were both super drunk and originally we were just staying together for tax benefits but then we fell in love for real? And you were our witness because you could finally legally drink and he wanted to give you a night on the town. So we’ve been seeing each other in secret for the last however-long-it’s-been-since-your-birthday.”

“I mean, that’s more realistic than Madam Rosalind Dragondreamer. And my birthday was six months ago.”

“Radical. Baby, you hear that?”

A muffled, “Five minutes, Jules, but,” a yawn, “Yeah.”

“Magic takes a lot out of him,” Lucretia clarifies.

“I can see. Oh, shit, RQ’s a callin’. You wanna get in on this and explain to her? Because you  _ did  _ explain earlier.”

Before Lucretia can protest, Julia touches her forehead, and the space around them is a cloudy black. It is not Magnus who faces them now, but rather, a near-glowing woman who might be human, elven, aasimar, or aarakocra, maybe even kenku; Lucretia can’t tell. All she can tell is that there  _ are  _ wings and that said wings  _ are skeletal _ . And, look, Lucretia’s met gods before. She’s not impressed by them; they are as fallible as mortals, as uninformed as mortals.

But goddamn, if she isn’t taken aback by Her might and grace. An aasimar man holding a scythe approaches. He’s handsome, wears a suit, has hair similar to the hair Lucretia would have four and a half years from now.

“What,” he says, “The  _ fuck _ , Julia, are you doing with a woman who was  _ previously undetectable _ , with a death count of  _ thirteen _ , and--”

“It’s really complicated?” offers Julia, who looks at her Queen with a plea in her eyes, and voice, and posture, and demeanor, “Kravitz, you can--it’s been, like, a year, at this point, we can drop the artifice. She’s chill. She’s an alien who’s avoided an apocalyptic alien beast with her family for a century, she’s more a death refugee than a death criminal. We can figure that out  _ later _ . I’m here because--well, Lucretia, you handle it.”

“We’re trying to prevent a host of unnatural deaths at the hands of the Grand Relics by ending the Wars that surround them. With collective amnesia. We’re from the future. And I'm an alien."

The Queen tilts Her head. So does her emissary.

“Give me, like, a week, Krav, ma’am, I  _ promise _ . Lucretia and Magnus and I  _ got  _ this.”

And the cloudy space disappears, and suddenly, she’s staring four men dead in the eyes. “We heard a crash,” Barry says, “Are you--are you guys, uh. Okay? I know you’ve both been kinda--holy shit.”

“We have an eighth crew member the whole time, because, if so, I’m  _ not _ , gonna--”

“Okay,” says Julia, “Uh. Lucretia and Magnus can  _ super  _ explain this. It’s all a  _ huge _ \--”

“We can end the wars,” says Lucretia, cutting to the point, “If you just let us handle it. Are you okay with that?”

No one does anything.

Fisher chimes, uselessly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comment or whatever idk it's 3am


	9. A GREENER PLACE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I come from a greener place  
> And a lawless past  
> I was raised with the cows and birds  
> And a toothless laugh
> 
> (if u c my enemies / rubblebucket)
> 
> The past is hard to cope with. Julia lies. Lucretia decides to stop lying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new year new chapter

Lucretia, thankfully, is not subject to Davenport’s lecture on Why We Don’t Bring Romantic Endeavors Back To The Ship. She  _ is  _ pulled aside by Taako and Barry, which is maybe seventeen times worse, but, look, she won’t complain.

“Can I bring Julia with me? I don’t think she deserves a shovel talk, yet, and, uh, this lecture can be a little bit impersonal. She’s very nice, Captain, and this idea is, in part, hers, so--”

“ _ Fine _ .”

She didn’t remember how  _ tired  _ everyone looked, at this point. Looking for Lup, watching the wars, it’s all exhausting, but Lucretia had been holed up. She hadn’t been doing her job. But Barry’s got bags under his eyes, colored like bruises, and Taako’s hair is more black roots than bleach or dye. They’re on the couch, the big one from cycle twenty-four, stolen from a duchess that Lup and Lucretia had maybe seduced a little bit kind of. Julia lounges on it, lazy-looking. She’s already blended in, somehow.

“Nice to meet you, by the way,” offers Barry, in his usual tone, and Taako waves in his usual way.

“You, too. Heard good things.”

“You’re from Raven’s Roost, right?” he asks, and he looks nervous, and-- _ oh. _ The Bell.

“Sekani was my father, yes. I--I don’t blame you. Not, like. Not entirely. I don’t think you intended as much. But. Look, I’ve had time to mourn, and I--it’s the fuckin’ Light’s fault, if anything. So. Whatever. We have--I have beef, sure, but--I think we have bigger priorities, right now, y’know?”

“Fair,” he says, “Yeah, yeah, uh. Super fair. Um. So. Your idea…”

“Lucretia’s idea. She’s--she wants to use that fish to make the world, uh.”

“If the world doesn’t remember the Relics, the wars will end. The Relics will still be wanted, if they’re seen, but the violence can end, and we can--”

“And Lup’ll forget, too,” says Taako, “How much’ll she forget?”

“Just the Relics. And that’s what she’s looking for, so--panicking, she’ll come back to us.”

“Hook, line, sinker,” adds Julia, who has apparently taken on the position of hype-man.

“Is it--Lucretia, I see the logic, but is it ethical? Do you--”

“Yes, Barry, is it fuckin’ ethical to inflict something on a world’s population? Something massive and painful and confusing?” Okay, Julia is a very good hype-man.

“I--” Taako nods, “I like this idea. I think it’s good. How’d you come up with it, Cretia?”

“I’ve had a lot of time,” she says, “And--and I met Julia, and she’s  _ from  _ here, and she’s  _ been affected _ by us, and I think--I think peace is something that we owe this planet. They can’t suffer for our own calm, Barry, I’ve thought for a long time about this, and I think--I think it’s a start. While we work on a more equitable solution.”

“What if Fisher rebroadcasts?”

“They won’t. They don’t do that anymore, it’s--they stopped doing that a little after we found them.”

“Have you tested it? Because everyone in the universe getting word of the--”

“How do you want me to test this, Barry?”

“I work for a goddess and She’s dating the goddess of fate and She told me it’d work.”

Julia has remarked before on her low charisma, but, look, that was a damn good Deception roll she just got. Lucretia pats her on the back, holds back a whispered, “Goddamn.” Barry and Taako look at her, blankly, and Barry, rolling with it a little faster than Taako--they’ve never been a wise group, the seven of them, and it shows--says, “Uh. Okay. Can I ask--which goddess?”

“The Raven Queen. I’m--it’s whatever. It’s a pact that started, like, a month ago.”

“But She told you it’d work?”

“Yeah? Well. Istus did, technically. Well. One of Her emissaries. Well. Future emissaries. Fate goddesses are tricky.”

“Yeah, yeah, uh--Barold, I’m kinda--I’m pro this idea? I think it’s what--”

Lucretia cuts him off, but they harmonize, “Lup would’ve wanted.” And he stops, stares, and Lucretia continues, “She was worried about the endless destruction, about the violence, and with this, we can just--remove it. Get rid of it. Trust me, Barry, it’ll work, and we can get her back.”

Barry nods, says, “I--other than rebroadcasting, there’s not much that could really--y’know. Hurt too much?”

“Yes. So. Let’s do it!”

Barry holds Julia back for what is clearly going to be a painful talk, and Lucretia wants to be there to support her, but Taako’s already pulled her aside, and she’s already talking to him, half-awake, disbelieving about the simplicity of this, and then, he says, “Books, are you--were you planning to include us in this plan, too? Or did Magnus and his new friend find out about it and then--”

“I wanted you to be happy,” is all she says.

“I found a poster for the--the fuckin’ show. It was good graphic design.”

“Thank you.”

“But, uh. Why don’t you trust us? Like, shit, I fuckin’ trust  _ you _ , for the most part, and--”

“It’s not a matter of trust, Taako, it’s a matter of the fact that the five of you are tearing yourselves apart. Your sister is gone because of the guilt this caused her. Taako, I--I just--”

“Who found out? Julie or Magnus?”   


“Julia did, first--”

“And how did you meet her?”

“She and Magnus were hooking up, I found her, she badgered me, and--you know. We bonded. She’s trying to set me up with some drow she met in Goldcliff. Also, says that said drow is an aspiring chef and aspiring wizard and that she’d  _ love  _ to meet someone with your skills--”

“Really.”

“I’m not lying. Zone of Truth me, if you’d like--”

“Merle’s too busy making fun of Mags.”

“Excellent. You hear anything remarkable?”

“No, same jokes he used on me when I brought that fuckin’ tiefling prince home in ninety-seven.”

“Gross.”

She isn’t lying. She isn’t lying. She’s dancing around the truth, sure, and her partner might be an untruth wearing a ballgown, but she isn’t lying. She needs to stop lying. She needs to make this her normal, again. She needs to find Avi and Killian and Carey and Boyland, and she needs to make sure they’re safe. She needs to find Kalen, and strike him dead.

“Can you… Taako, can you not tell everyone about the original idea? I feel that--”

“No, no, I got you. Don’t wanna seem like you like us too much. Been there.”

“I actually don’t want to seem like an ethical disaster, because, unlike you, I’m not afraid of emotion and love.”

“Sure you’re not.”

The rest of the day goes oddly, but, by all accounts, normal. Magnus, who is not a great liar, is quieter than usual, and Julia is there, but otherwise, it’s totally normal.

At dinner, Lucretia eats her first Taako-cooked home meal in four-and-a-half years. Or, arguably, in a day. She’s not sure. It’s curried shrimp--Julia whispers something quiet to Magnus, who laughs, nods. And Taako stares at them. They’re the giveaway, he’s the one who’s gonna find them out. He’s also the most likely to go along with it, weirdly, so long as she can convince him that she found Lup in some way--she’s safe. But.

“I’d like to go home, tomorrow, if that’s alright. My dad’ll get worried.”

“I’d hope,” says Barry, a little awkward, “He--”

“I know,” Julia says, sharp. Her voice is cutting, her voice is brutal. Even younger, even unscarred, she is a woman who has seen too much. “I’d just prefer that no one else I know dies. Also, he  _ really _ likes Magnus, so I’m sure he’d like to actually interview him about that apprenticeship, even if--”

“An apprenticeship?” Barry asks, and he offers Magnus a fist bump, which Magnus takes heartily. “Shit, man, that’s--that’s cool as hell. Woodworking?”

“You know it.”

“We’re the best craft shop on the continent,” Julia brags, preening a bit, “You commented on my leg earlier, that was--that was a Waxmen orig, if you’ll believe it”

“How long’ve you two been seeing each other?” Taako asks.

“In secret, for a year,” Magnus blurts, “I met her on my way back from the Gulch. I was kinda heatsick and her hometown is, like. So cold. You would not believe how fucking cold it is there.”

“Astoundingly,” says Lucretia, “It is so goddamn cold. Like, Barry, you’re from Fuar-Kalt, right?  _ You  _ would hate it. The rest of us have no hope.”

“But anyway--yeah, also, I grew up on an  _ equator _ , Jules, with  _ two suns _ , so, like, I have every right to complain--”

“When did he drop the alien thing on you, by the way?” Taako asks. He's getting suspicious, and Lucretia does not trust the two of them to lie successfully about their own relationship on her own life.   


“I figured it out on my own, but I think it’s pretty hot, so, like--”

“Gross,” Lucretia says, because that is her usual response to Julia’s alien commentary, now. “No, it’s--it’s a lovely romance story that I, personally, know too much about, and I wouldn’t like to know more, especially not while I’m eating, please, gods above, interrogate on your own time--”

The sun sets. Drinks are spiked. Ink is spread over paper, fed to a jellyfish. Lucretia falls asleep, fails to dream:

She knows that tomorrow will be a better day than it was originally. Nevertheless, she can't help but feel that something has gone terribly wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey hey hey


	10. into an eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You fit into me  
> like a hook into an eye
> 
> a fish hook  
> an open eye 
> 
> (atwood)
> 
> An ending. A beginning.

Steven Waxmen is a man that has intimidated Lucretia in each of her many encounters with him, but Lucretia can deal with it, she thinks. She’s an adult, she can handle lying to other adults. Even if that lie is  _ your daughter is joining my adventuring party and we’re going to save the world. also i need a new chair _ . It helps that the chair part is wholly true, and Steven offers her cinnamon tea, sits down with her to discuss. This is mostly to distract him from the fact that his daughter is currently murdering someone with a man that Steven would  _ know  _ isn’t from Raven’s Roost.

“She’ll still be accessible, of course; she’ll communicate with you, but she will be living on our ship.”

“I just--if she wants to, she can, but the shop’s runnin’ dry on employees.”

Oh. Shit. That’s  _ right _ . She only managed to get Magnus a delivery job there because they were so brutally underemployed. Because of  _ course  _ time travel had to lead to this complication.

“My brother is a woodcarver,” she says, again. “He is one of the best from our home.”

“Where is your home?”

“It’s by the sea, another continent. Like another world. We… we had to leave it when it was attacked, but the memory of it was erased along with its population.”

“That’s terrible,” Steven says, “I’m very sorry.”

He’s human--up there in age, but still in shape. He’s got a scraggly goatee, the same olive skin as his daughter, the same bright eyes. His dark hair is short, if a bit unkempt, and he’s got tiny scars on his face and arms from work, rather than fights. Burns, scratches, accidents. He looks like a man who cares too much.

Lucretia can relate to that. She thinks.

“So how’d you  _ meet  _ my daughter, even, Miss, uh, Ipre? Not to seem rude, but--”

“I offer magical tutoring to adults who find themselves unwittingly involved in pacts. She signed up, and, well, we got on like a house on fire.”

“You’re a warlock, or are you more in--”

“I’m actually a cleric of Pan. Clericism and pact magic are actually quite similar--”

“Oh, no, I agree. Why Pan?”

“My father was a cleric of Pan; it’s more… familial, than anything.”

A universe away, Lucretia should be having a conversation with Steven and Julia, upon whom she should cast Modify Memory, so that they remember her as resembling someone else. Julia should tell her that she has a good spirit, and Steven should laugh, hearty, and Lucretia should be charmed. She should say, please take care of this man, he’s kind and sweet and talented, and Julia should say, well, he’s also an able-bodied carpenter, and we do need to keep up with  _ demand _ , and Lucretia should say, hah, that too, I suppose, and she should notice that Julia is beautiful, and she should notice that Julia has a laugh that feels like sunrise.

But that was a universe away. She is here now. She is waiting on a signal.

A scream, a bird’s cry, from outside. Steven stands up. Lucretia braces herself.

“Don’t…”

“Jules,” he says, “She told me she was--”

“I’m sure she’s fine, Mr. Waxmen, I--”

“She’s reckless, Miss Ipre, ever since her father--”

“I know, sir. I--look, I’ll handle this, I promise.”

She rushes out, and she sees Julia on the ground, stabbed.

She teleports back to the ship before Magnus can see her, turns back time again.

And again.

And again.

She murders Kalen herself, a couple of times. Finds that Julia doesn’t remember her, doesn’t remember Magnus--they don’t fall, not like they did when he forgot.

She goes back. She erases everything again. Tells no one. Sends them off. She redacts more carefully for the Captain, she keeps Barry on board. She takes every possible precaution. She never finds Lup. She looks. She can’t go back to her, somehow.  And every single time, within a month, things fall apart. Julia dies, or Barry dies, or Raven’s Roost burns, or or or. She sees weeping, more weeping than she ever wanted. She can’t do this again. She can’t.

“You have to want it,” says the cup, still in Magnus’ voice even if Lucretia is the one wielding it. She thinks she depersonalized it. She wishes she could hear her own voice. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know what I want,” she says, “I want to find Lup. I want to stop the wars. I want--I want my family to be happy. I want this  _ world _ to be happy.”

“ _ What _ do you want?”

“I want--I want to win.”

“What do  _ you  _ want?”

“I want to be seen as good. I want to be good; I want to be--more than just an observer. I keep observing, and--I want to--”

“What do you  _ want _ ?”

“Normal. I want--I want to pretend that I didn’t fuck up saving Julia, that I didn’t fuck up going back--I want things to be the way they were. I want it back. I want to go back, and I want to forget, can you--”

“I can try.”

It glows, and she sees Magnus staring blankly at her, and time--

She is on a horse, and she doesn’t save people anymore. She’s recovered two Relics already, there’s no need to stall, but--but she hears shouts as she makes her way down a detour, syllables that ring all too familiar, Kalen and bombs and the revolutionaries’ home . Her head feels foggy.

She rushes in. It feels right. And she heads straight toward a home, and she grabs a woman whose wedding she crashed, and she runs back out of town. The woman is fighting, a little bit, but--

“I could’ve  _ saved  _ them!”

“And died. You could have died.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Unimportant. Enchanté.”

“Well, you don’t get my name either. Diviner. Necromancer. That’s what you are, I can--I can sense it running off of you.”

“I was never one to follow fate or destiny, Miss Waxmen.”

“Are you with him?”

“Like hell I’d be with him. I follow local politics.”

Julia stares at her, and somewhere in a corner of her mind, Lucretia thinks--things will be better, now. 

Hopefully.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you enjoyed! please leave a comment below and smash that mf like button whatever

**Author's Note:**

> give it a chance!  
> <3  
> comments, kudos, and subs give me joy.  
> xoxo  
> gossip bee  
> (@yahooanswer on tumble)


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